Personas: the business benefits
Personas show you who is using your product or web site and what they want to do with it.
What are personas?
A persona is a behaviour-based, user archetype you can use to make decisions about your product’s features, navigation and design. Personas are presented to the design team as a single human with a name, face, attitudes, and goals.
Why develop personas?
Personas simplify design by encouraging stakeholders to focus on the highest priority needs of the highest priority users. By designing for the archetype — whose goals and behaviour patterns are well understood — you will satisfy the broader group of people represented by that archetype.
When should I develop personas?
Personas should be developed early in the design process so that all design decisions are based on customers’ goals.
Our approach to personas
- We survey your user base (typically around 5% of users) and use cluster analysis to identify the main categories of end users.
- We then carry out interviews with people within these segments. We usually interview 20-25 people to explore the goals, behaviours and attitudes of each person in a lot more depth.
- Each persona is captured in a 1-2 page description that includes behaviour patterns, goals, skills, attitudes, and environment, with a few fictional personal details to bring the persona to life. On a typical project, we expect to derive 3-4 personas.
What does it cost?
Prices start from £14,950.
What should I do next?
- Read about our other usability consultancy services.
- Complete the form below and one of our consultants will contact you within 24hrs to discuss your situation.
Personas in practice
“Continually delighted with their expertise and pragmatic solutions, we engage Userfocus in most of our key strategic initiatives. We work with only a few select external partners, and Userfocus is at the top of our short list.”
– Ali Vassigh, Whirlpool Corporation.